Autumn in Kansai

Misha returned to Japan for almost two weeks to celebrate Halloween and attend the Marine Corps Birthday Ball.  After a costume party for Halloween, we returned to Kyoto and Osaka to see some sights we missed the first time around, then tacked on two nights of glamping at an olive farm on Awaji Island.  It required many train rides and schlepping our luggage and Mochi.  It was a great, if not exhausting, trip across the Kansai region.

Our first stop was Kyoto, where we visited Toei Studio Park for the Yokai festival.  Yokai are spirits, monsters, or supernatural beings from Japanese folklore, and the festival was a parade of costumes.  The event was disappointing, as we arrived only a few minutes late and missed the short parade.  We still saw plenty of costumes, but the large crowd made it difficult to see the end of the very brief performance.  The next day we visited the Arashiyama Bamboo Forest, which was absurdly crowded and not at all worth the visit.  Bamboo forests are common in Japan, so our advice would be to either go to Arashiyama before 8am or find another forest to visit.  The nearby neighborhood of the same name was very cute, which made the hassle of navigating the crowds more tolerable.

In Osaka, we went out in Dotonbori for the first time, which is popular for its nightlife.  We found some fun restaurants and a bar that made cocktails with fire and liquid nitrogen called Bar Masuda, though admittedly the bartenders’ performance was better than the actual flavor.  On our second night, we visited the TeamLab Botanical Garden, which was so cool we immediately booked tickets to the TeamLab Planets exhibition in Tokyo. 

The most relaxing part of the trip were our two nights on Awajishima, a small, mountainous island connecting the city of Kobe and the island of Shikoku.  We stayed at an olive farm that offered private glamping lodges, a private wood-fired sauna, and beautiful views of the ocean.  The meals were extremely fresh and delivered straight to our little kitchen, where I cooked us sukiyaki and a variety of different meats and vegetables, eggs, and sausage.  It was a great way to relax after the previous five days of moving about.

Misha will return to Tokyo soon for the holidays, and this time we intend to spend more time here.  We’ll be celebrating her birthday, so I have some surprises in store.  Next time, I’ll reflect on my past six months here, and what I’ve learned now that I’ve gotten to know the city a little better.